Software application servers, examples of which include Oracle WebLogic Server (WLS) and Glassfish, generally provide a managed environment for running enterprise software applications. An application server (e.g., WLS) configuration system provides internal trees of java beans for configuring and monitoring the application server. These beans are often exposed to administrators and customers using an interface such as JMX to enable management of the application server configuration system. Such interfaces can require a significant amount of resources and are considered relatively heavy-weight and slow.